Synergy Learning Management System (LMS) dramatically simplifies everything on a teacher’s to-do list so teachers can focus on student learning and achievement, not on managing technology. Synergy LMS facilitates classroom management, centralizes and organizes curriculum, content and assessments, and features a robust gradebook at its core. Powerful data analysis and RTI/MTSS functionality provides real-time insights and easy-to-use tools to support teachers in personalizing instruction, identifying struggling students, targeting interventions, monitoring progress, and tracking mastery on standards. Plus, as part of the seamless Synergy Education Platform, there’s no need to integrate or sync with other systems. Your data is already where it needs to be, with up-to-the-minute accuracy.
With Synergy LMS, teachers manage their classroom and their student’s learning from the powerful TeacherVUE® Portal. One login connects them with every tool for every task they need to accomplish, whether it’s a daily task like taking attendance or a once-in-a-while event like generating report cards. The gradebook offers unparalleled depth, with highly flexible grading options and powerful tools that streamline administrative processes so teachers have more time to support student learning.
Teachers can easily take and submit attendance right from their class roster or seating chart. Once attendance has been recorded in TeacherVUE, office staff can immediately access the names and phone numbers of absent students for attendance verification.
Teachers can create incident referrals from the TeacherVUE portal or mobile application. The Discipline view within the TeacherVUE portal lists the time and date of a discipline incident, a description of the incident, and the name of the person who referred the student for discipline issues.
TeacherVUE seating charts provide teachers with a quick way to take attendance, report lunch counts, and access various types of student information. Seating charts display photos of students in rows and columns or in free-form clusters that reflect real-life classroom configurations. Seating chart templates can be created once and then populated multiple times with students from different classes, providing support for secondary school teachers and any teacher with multiple sections in a single classroom.
Teachers simply click a student photo on the seating chart to access demographics, classes, emergency contact info and more.
Teachers can create and print labels in a variety of sizes and fonts to serve a multitude of needs, from mailing labels to parent-teacher conference labels, name tags, and more.
Limited-access logins enable substitutes to take attendance from the seating chart and see detailed instructions from the teacher.
Teachers can quickly create new assignments from the Assignment screen or directly from any element on a curriculum map. All of the standards and resources associated with an element automatically populate an assignment created from the element. Teachers may enable the automatic creation of an Assignment Discussion Page for any assignment, generating a page with all assignment details, associated curriculum resources, and a secure discussion Stream, providing students with a convenient forum to discuss ideas and get their questions answered. Students access Assignment Discussion Pages in the StudentVUE® web portal or mobile app.
Report cards are auto-populated from TeacherVUE® gradebook entries with a single click for significant time savings. Report cards can be tailored to match board-approved formats, whether traditional or standards-based, and delivered to parents in any language.
Digital Dropbox enables students to submit completed assignments from the StudentVUE® web portal or mobile app. Snapshots of Google Drive™ files can be easily uploaded without leaving Digital Dropbox, and can no longer be edited by the student after submission. For assignments that require students to show their work, such as math or art, students can capture a photo and upload it to Digital Dropbox for grading, eliminating the need to submit work on paper.
The TeacherVUE gradebook enables districts to centrally prepare gradebooks and make them available to all teachers at the start of school to save time. District gradebooks can include pre-defined assignments and category weighting settings for entire grade levels or individual subjects. If a district does not require teachers to use a district gradebook, they may remove pre-defined items from their individual gradebooks.
Dropbox Grader enables teachers to receive and view assignments right in their gradebook. Clickable rubrics automate score calculations, and teachers can move directly from one ungraded assignment to the next to finish faster.
Teachers may associate a scoring rubric with each assignment and use the rubric to quickly score student work in Dropbox Grader, without the need for tedious calculations. When each objective has been rated, Dropbox Grader automatically calculates the score. Teachers have the flexibility to adjust the calculated score at any time.
In the event of an emergency, an interactive emergency response screen may be launched from Synergy® SIS or the AdminVUE® Mobile app, enabling teachers to account for the whereabouts of students using any smartphone without logging in to the TeacherVUE® portal or the mobile app. Administrators see up-to-the-minute counts from teachers and can fill in the emergency response on behalf of any staff member before sending the report to emergency responders.
To meet the varied needs of districts, the TeacherVUE® gradebook can perform advanced calculations such as term or category weighting, and can aggregate multiple assignment scores to determine student proficiency levels on standards.
Teachers can use analysis bands to filter student performance on assignments, assessments and standards and instantly create breakout groups for differentiated instruction or intervention.
Synergy® support maximum flexibility in grading, with built-in support for district and state standards in the gradebook and on report cards.
Teachers can make course recommendations for individual students that enable them request courses when they haven’t met the specified pre-requisites.
Teachers can import, view and analyze student results for summative assessments such as state-mandated tests. Test analysis helps teachers identify classes that may benefit from a change in instructional approach in order to help students pass a specific test.
Teachers can easily schedule parent-teacher conferences for individual students or for all students. Conference times may be auto-filled for an entire class based on the time entered for the first student. Rescheduling and deleting conferences is just as simple.
TeacherVUE enables teachers to print reports for an individual student or for all students in a class or group. Available reports, such as Class Roster or Parent/Student Portal Activity, are based on district settings.
Google Integration
The TeacherVUE® gradebook is fully integrated with Google Classroom™ to provide a multitude of benefits for teachers using both systems, such as:
Technical staff also save time by setting up Google Classroom classes and student rosters based on data from the TeacherVUE gradebook.
In addition, Google Drive™ integration makes it easy for Synergy users to move files directly from Google Drive into Digital Dropbox and Digital Content Pages. When teachers enable assignment uploads through Digital Dropbox, students can upload Google Drive documents right from the StudentVUE web portal. Synergy captures a snapshot of the file for the teacher to annotate and grade, preventing students from making changes after turning in the assignment. Google Drive files can also be selected and uploaded into Digital Content Pages without leaving Synergy LMS.
Help Every Student Succeed with Synergy RTI/MTSS
Synergy RTI/MTSS leverages existing student records and real-time performance data to streamline the RTI process for instructional staff. Now it’s easy to identify students needing intervention, assign them to targeted interventions, and monitor their progress. Learn more.
Create assessments with just a few clicks, aligned with standards, stored centrally for districtwide access, and administered within the student portal. Instant results help teachers track student progress on standards, identify students who need additional help, and automatically provide immediate performance feedback in the parent and student portals.
Leverage the optional standards-aligned Inspect® Item Bank from our partner, Key Data Systems, or build your district’s customized item bank from scratch or from any imported item bank. Traditional and innovative item types are both fully supported to help prepare students for the latest computer-based state assessments, such as Smarter Balanced and PARCC. Passages, images and equations may be included with most item types. Teacher-created items and assessments may be nominated for promotion to district-level sharing.
Enable teachers to administer formative classroom assessments quickly and easily, guiding day-to-day learning and giving students clear, actionable feedback. Create your own or select from the optional Inspect® Assessment Suite from Key Data Systems, with 300+ pre-built assessments to help you get started right away.
Deliver district-level summative assessments to any student subset, with access restrictions to ensure that only an administrators can view, schedule and change them. The optional Inspect® Assessment Suite from Key Data Systems can be leveraged to provide more than 300 pre-built assessments, including summative assessments that are modeled after the Smarter Balanced blueprints to be fair, reliable and valid. Districts may also build their own assessments in Synergy® LMS.
Administer periodic benchmark assessments to measure individual and classroom progress toward standards and provide feedback to students to guide learning. The optional Inspect® Assessment Suite from Key Data Systems provides pre-built benchmarks, written by professionals and analyzed for validity.
Synergy® LMS now fully supports technology enhanced items, so students can gain exposure to the same item types they will encounter on the latest computer-based state assessments, such as PARCC and Smarter Balanced. Technology enhanced item types include: Constructed Response, Evidence-Based Selected-Response (EBSR), Graphic Gap Match, Hot Spot, Hot Text, Inline Choice, Matching, Multi-Part, Multiple Choice, Multiple Select, Number Line, Select Point and Text Entry.
The interactive Results screen, accessed through the Assessment Dashboard, updates in real time as each student completes an assessment, so teachers can immediately adapt instruction to eliminate learning gaps. Graphs show results by class, student and standard. Color-coded analysis bands highlight students performing below, at, or above a pre-defined threshold, and breakout groups can be created right from the Results screen with a single click. Longitudinal assessment results show performance by school, class/section, course, student or AYP subgroup. Assessment scores may also be viewed in the gradebook alongside assignments, quizzes and tests for greater insight into student performance patterns.
Item analysis provides insights into the quality of assessments and assessment questions, and helps identify ambiguous or misleading questions that need to be removed from the item bank or improved before they are used again. Teachers can use item analysis to see which student selected each response for each question, improving their understanding of which concepts they need to clarify for their class or for individual students. The optional Inspect® Item Bank from Key Data Systems provides further support for teachers, listing rationales that students may have used for choosing each distractor and providing guidance for instruction.
When scheduling an assessment, teachers have the option of allowing formative question feedback to students. If selected, students are able to review their incorrect answers after completing the assessment.
The content editor is used to create teacher instructions, questions, answers and passages. In addition to all the familiar text-formatting options (such as font styles and size, links and alignment) item authors can create equations and insert tables, special characters, lines and images.
Teachers use the Assessment Dashboard to create and schedule assessments, monitor active assessments, and view real-time student performance data. The districtwide item bank can be filtered by standard, grade or subject, and assessments can be easily created with just a couple of intuitive clicks. Automatic scoring, essay question quick-review, and a constructed response grading screen save teachers time.
GradeCam is an optional plugin that provides support for paper-and-pencil assessments. GradeCam enables teachers to print blank bubble sheets, use their webcam to scan and score completed bubble sheets, and provide immediate feedback to students. GradeCam also supports bulk scanning to quickly score large numbers of bubble sheets, as with paper-based district assessments.
A live dashboard view allows teachers, principals, and district users to see student responses while assessments are in progress, tracking and displaying each student’s score. Teachers can use the live dashboard to determine whether intervention is required during an assessment and by which student or students.
A centralized, standards-aligned curriculum repository stores districtwide curriculum elements and helps teachers easily find and use the best lesson plans and resources for every student.
Synergy® LessonVUE features a centralized repository for all your district’s curriculum elements to ensure that teachers have access to the most effective instructional tools available. Each curriculum element can be aligned to standards, associated with specific resources and materials, and connected in a hierarchical structure that enables users to easily find related elements. Teachers can easily create a new assignment from any curriculum element.
Synergy® LessonVUE enables teachers to leave social media style ratings and reviews for lesson plans and other curriculum elements. Ratings and reviews are visible districtwide and show prominently in curriculum element search results.
Teachers can search the centralized curriculum repository by keyword to quickly identify appropriate lesson plans and interventions. Results can be filtered by grade, element type, status, and materials needed, and sorted by best review, newest, and element type or title.
Custom templates simplify formatting and provide a consistent look-and-feel among all curriculum elements. Multiple template types may be defined – such as unit, topic, lesson plan, event, and intervention – and districts can create as many templates as needed, with each detailed or general as the district prefers. A rich text editor makes it easy to format the curriculum templates and the content for each curriculum element.
LessonVUE supports the creation of district curriculum maps outlining what needs to be taught and when, for each course, subject and grade level. Teachers inherit district-defined maps and can customize their map to fit their individual teaching style if allowed by the district. Curriculum elements can be easily searched and added to maps with just a few clicks, and selecting an element on the map opens a menu allowing users to create an assignment based on the element, edit the element, or indicate that it’s been taught.
Digital Content Pages enable the rapid creation of powerful class websites and content libraries. Save and organize digital content resources, add text and discussion streams, organize into pages or libraries, and share with any group or individual for viewing directly in Synergy.
Digital Content Page creators can add existing Synergy content – including curriculum elements, curriculum maps, Admin Reports, and pre-defined gradebook data such as Class Mark Distribution or At Risk Students – as well as dedicated discussion Streams.
Content can be added to Digital Content Pages from outside Synergy, such as web pages, online videos, files from Google Drive™, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and more. Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI)-compliant learning applications can also be accessed directly from Synergy LMS with no additional login required. Digital Content Pages display snapshot of web pages and most other content for easy identification of resources.
When adding a text panel to a Digital Content page, a familiar editing interface makes it simple to format panel contents and add links, images, Flash elements and more.
Digital Content Pages are easy to share with the right people, and only the right people. Embedded keyword search assists users in quickly finding and selecting page recipients – including parents and students – by name, grade, school, role, etc., and sharing pages with individuals or groups. Access to any library, page, or panel may be customized to serve multiple audiences and show each user type only the content that they need to see. Content shared on Digital Content Pages can be viewed directly in Synergy.
Digital Content Page authors may select from a variety of page layouts, and can customize any layout by dragging and dropping content panels to their desired location on the page. Menus can be easily added for navigating connected pages.
Digital Content Pages can be created as standalone pages or combined into powerful content libraries. These highly customizable pages may serve as class websites, parent information pages or department information hubs, or to deliver information and resources to groups such as school principals, algebra teachers or sports teams. Custom analytics dashboards may be created by pulling multiple Admin Reports into a single Digital Content Page and sharing the page with any Synergy user or group. The potential uses are limited only by the imagination of the page creator.
LessonVUE supports the creation of complete, interactive online courses for distance learning. Authors can organize content and add prerequisites and other conditions to define the instructional sequence and optimize learning for students. Courses can be built from new or existing content – including rich media from YouTube and other online sources, as well as embedded content from Google Drive™ and Microsoft® Office.
Data analysis in Synergy LMS highlights patterns and data points that educators can use not only to improve instructional decision making, but also to inform district improvement initiatives, curriculum decisions and resource allocations. Role-based access shows teachers performance insights for their students and classes, while administrators have access to wider-angle views including school site and district performance.
Synergy® LMS provides powerful data analysis to visualize information and highlight patterns and data points that educators can use to improve instructional decision making. Teachers can use data analysis to track individual and class progress toward district and state standards so they can more effectively individualize instruction, target intervention, and improve outcomes for all students. Administrators may use data analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of specific teachers, curriculum elements, and assessment items to help drive improvements in quality of instruction. Student performance can be analyzed using a wide variety of criteria including school, class, grade level, subject, standard, assignment type, assignment, assessment, report card area, final mark, test, gender and ethnicity. Synergy users may drill down into most analysis screens and reports for greater detail, and print reports or export data.
Synergy® LMS makes it easy for teachers to track student and class progress toward district and state standards. A summary view shows all standards for a class and overall class performance on each standard. If a class is underperforming on a standard, the teacher can create a standard-aligned assignment or assessment right from the summary view. Teachers can click on any standard to see detailed information about each student’s performance, create breakout groups for differentiated instruction or intervention, and locate curriculum elements related to the standard.
Synergy® LMS supports performance analysis at the classroom and student level. Classroom-level analysis includes a performance summary for each learning standard and the calculated average of all assignments tied to each standard. Student-level analysis includes proficiency on specific standards and assignment types compared to the overall class, as well as a graphical representation of student work compared to the class average. The Analysis Tool enables teachers to analyze student or class performance by assignment, report card area, standard or final mark. Data can be filtered and sorted into Views that can be saved for future use or applied to other classes. Interactive, district-configured Admin Reports enable teachers to extract any combination of data from Synergy SIS, Synergy LMS, and Synergy SE into a single report for side-by-side viewing. Drag-and-drop column headings enable instant grouping, sorting, and reordering of data, yielding valuable insights at the classroom, site and district level. Admin Reports help teachers monitor critical performance measures for specific student subgroups, such as how well ELLs or special education students overall are performing on writing assignments or math assessments.
Synergy LMS enables districts to measure student performance against specific curriculum elements in order to objectively evaluate individual elements and identify elements that need to be revised or replaced. Curriculum analysis helps inform purchasing decisions so curriculum and instruction teams can make the best use of limited budgets.
Interactive Admin Reports give educators an unprecedented ability to see student performance data alongside any data stored in Synergy SIS. District administrators can use Admin Reports to monitor critical performance measures for specific student subgroups, such as how well ELLs or special education students overall are performing on writing assignments or math assessments. Custom analytics dashboards may be created by pulling multiple Admin Reports into a single Digital Content Page and sharing the page with any Synergy user or group. The Analysis Dashboard enables district administrators and principals to chart mark distribution, assessment, and test history results for an entire school, with the ability to filter by gender or ethnicity.
Test Group analytics provide longitudinal insights into student performance patterns on high-stakes state assessments. Teachers can highlight results that match a specific performance level or filter results by score type for quick, high-level insights.
Gradebook Analysis Bands provide an at-a-glance, color-coded view of which of students who are performing at, above or below a specified performance level on assignments and assessments. Analysis Bands help teachers group students for differentiated instruction and identify at-risk students for intervention. Teachers can define multiple sets of Analysis Bands and switch between them to view data for separate purposes – for example, one set to track proficiency on standards and another to determine eligibility for sports or student council.
Within the TeacherVUE® gradebook, a library of reports pre-defined by the district enables teachers to easily generate and print commonly-accessed information such as the class roster, emergency contact information and student progress. All Gradebook Reports can be printed in PDF format, and some include additional output formats, such as Excel.
Built-in communication and collaboration tools encourage the exchange of information and ideas, support co-teaching, and make it easier to connect and converse online with staff, parents and students.
Synergy® LMS makes it easier for members of any group to share content and participate in group discussions. Simply create a Digital Content Page to support any group, from school or district task forces and committees to student groups such as student government, yearbook, sports teams, clubs, honor societies and community service groups.
Teachers can set any assignment to automatically pull together all associated curriculum elements and resources on a single page that is instantly shared with students in the StudentVUE® web portal or mobile app. Every Assignment Discussion Page includes a private group discussion Stream, providing students with a safe, convenient forum to discuss ideas and ask questions.
Synergy® LMS includes a variety of tools to help make co-teaching easier and more effective. Teachers can share homerooms, classes, and breakout groups, and can set up private group discussion Streams for collaborating on lesson plans and instructional resources.
Streams are intuitive social media–type communication flows between two or more users, designed to promote collaboration and discussion at all levels within schools and districts. Streams consist of connected posts that may include text, documents, web links, and replies to other users’ posts. Streams can be 1:1 or group discussions, public or private, and can be enabled within the ParentVUE® and StudentVUE® portals to encourage and facilitate home-school collaboration.
Increase parent involvement and boost student accountability with anytime, anywhere access to the information and tools they need.
Parents and students can access the ParentVUE® and StudentVUE® portals on the web or with an iOS or Android mobile device. Each user login works on both web and mobile, making it easy to switch between the two based on what’s most convenient at login time.
Students can take assessments and submit assignments, and parents can register students online without having to visit the district office, then pay fees and update student information at their convenience. Both can communicate with teachers, submit course requests, and receive email notifications about school events, attendance and discipline incidents. Parents can also opt in to receive notifications when their child performs below a specified grade on any assignment or test.
As part of the seamless Synergy® Education Platform, the ParentVUE® and StudentVUE® web portals and mobile apps are always connected to real-time, systemwide data. Parents and students can rest easy knowing that any information they view is up to date, from assignments and learning resources to grades and assessment scores.
Synergy data flows to all the right places in real time, eliminating the need for duplicate data entry, freeing up time for teachers, and providing deeper insights into student learning.
Synergy® LMS performs many actions automatically to eliminate tedious and repetitive tasks and save users time. Synergy pulls together assignment details and resources for students and keeps them up to date if changes are made. It delivers scheduled assignments to students and scores the results. It shows displays real-time information in the parent and student portals and populates report cards with a single click. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Synergy® LMS eliminates the hassle of logging in to multiple teacher tools and keeping track of the password for each one. Because it’s a single, seamless solution, teachers only need to log in once to gain access to all the tools in Synergy LMS as well as content from integrated tools such as Google Drive™.
Synergy® LMS provides comprehensive support for district and state standards. Assignments can be associated with specific academic standards, the curriculum repository and item bank can be searched by standard, student performance can be analyzed by standard and final grades and report cards can be based on standards.
In districts using Synergy® Special Education (SE), special education referrals can be created and sent directly from the TeacherVUE® portal. Teachers can also access student IEPs and 504 Plan IEPs, with district permission.
The TeacherVUE® Mobile app delivers essential classroom tools with tablet convenience. Teachers can use their iPad to view and enter data while moving about the classroom or campus, create immediate discipline incident referrals anytime and anywhere, and manage field trips on the go.
Teachers using the TeacherVUE® Mobile app on iPad or Android can make course recommendations for any student enrolled in their class.
Teachers can opt in to receive Class Alerts notifying them of changes in the TeacherVUE® gradebook – such as when a student is added to a class or a breakout group is created – or to remind them when new setup is needed. Student Notifications alert teachers to important student information such as health conditions, custodial issues and behavior issues and can be viewed on the Student screen.